XCOM adventures 10 · 7:34pm May 20th, 2016
Due to the disaster of the last mission, got a new recruit and developed more fancy tactics. Squad size is now seven and bleeding out will be a bit more common than outright death. Just need to remember to make sure squads have medkits to stablize the dying soldiers. New recruit is Apple Bloom.
While preparing and waiting for a mission the aliens built another facility. Which increases the Avatar Project, but also gives me somewhere else to strike to reduce it. A pity both facilities are outside my territory and I don't have the ability to expand yet. Maybe spending resources on the new tactics and recruits was not the best idea. To the black market! We can sell the alien corpses we've been collecting and some of our technology and get some supplies and information.
After weeks of waiting (like two weeks, so the plural is technically accurate) the resistance sends info on a VIP they want 'taken care of' so the newly reformed Team Pony (and horizon) is sent out. Three new slots (two from dead teammates and one extra from the new seven person squad) are filled with Flash Sentry, Twilight Sparkle, Apple Bloom, and Maud Pie. Huh. Okay, I have no idea how I got four people into three new slots. Maybe I didn't put someone in that was in but didn't get killed? Who knows. This is the team now.
And due to the limitations of the game and the face that seven people squads are from a mod, horizon has gotten so good at hiding he doesn't even show up in the team lineup anymore. His hat and shades and sniper rifle are nowhere to be seen.
Now for the mission! First few turns getting into position for ambushes worked pretty well. Until I told Sweetie Belle to hack one of the scanners. Even though her percentage chance was higher than the other hacker (Flash Sentry) I really should have let him do it. Oh well, I guess her punishment of everyone attacking her and taking her down will have to do. Just a pity that both Flash Sentry and Maud Pie panicked. Maud at least shot in the bad guy's direction. Flash was a coward and just hunker down.
So, mission technically a success in that the target was captured and brought to the evac point. Pity that nobody else made it and almost everyone died.... Nope. Nope. Going back to previous save. I'm not having a successful mission where Horizon was the only survivor (and completely fine) even if he did do better than most missions this time around. Even killed a enemy! But nope.
Let's try this again. Sent team Review this time to capture the VIP.
Even though the first guy who moved ran into enemies and ruined our concealment, the mission went pretty smoothly. PresentPerfect tossing around the healing when people got hurt, Titanium Dragon hacked an enemy robot to take control of it. Good teamwork between various squad members took down the two flying guys. Even hacked one of the enemy troops by the innovative method of stabbing his brain with a computer. No really, that's one of the special moves in the game. That got us a lead on a enemy facility so I don't have to make contact with the region before I attack it. So that's good. Even stabilized Ferret when she was bleeding out.
Pity that I then forgot about her and left her behind on the ground to get captured when everyone had killed all the bad guys and evacuated. Whoops! I was feeling so good about a successful mission too. At least I'll probably get a chance to rescue her later.
Operation Half-Eaten Jester
Found one of the alien facilities. Time to send a team to go blow it up! This should be a piece of cake. Team Pony is great at blowing things up. Occasionally even manages to do it in a strategic manner that hurts the enemy without killing teammates! Plus the research for plasma grenades just finished up so they will be equipped with the most powerful combat explosive there is. What could go wrong?
The place was crawling with dangerous enemies. Three snakes, three flying aliens, plenty of advent troops. Grenades and gunfire everywhere barely held them back. Big Mac went down, but was stabilized before he could bleed out. Rainbow Dash, sadly, was killed when two of the flying aliens double-teamed her with their glowing plasma blades. Worst of all, and truly the sign that it was a desperate fight, Horizon was actually wounded! By the stun lancer in the reinforcements that got called in when the team wiped everything out. At that point Apple Bloom just set the charges and the team fled with dead and wounded carried to the evac point. Boom.
Success on the mission reduced the avatar project countdown by six! Which is impressive considering I was expecting it to reduce just one or two. With only two ticks on the clock I can go back to being lazy about it.
John Perry continnues his Psychic powers training between missions. Not only can he cause insanity, but now he has a power he calls Soulfire and is practicing so that he can use it to tear out alien souls and consume them to heal wounds. We aren't sure how much of that is the actual power and how much is him being dramatic and/or legitimately insane.
HOW DID THEY WOUND ME
EVEN MY TEAMMATES CAN'T SEE ME
HOW, GRIFFIN
HOW D: